Uncommon Dissent?

Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing W. Dembski (ed)

Uncommon dissent? They are a host of Darwin critics who wouldn't abscribe to ID. How about people like Lovtrup?

This collection of essays suggests a wish rather than a reality, but points to the reason for the problem: the uncommonly strong hold of the Darwin paradigm on the intellectual public. Worth the price of the book is the reprint of the Berlinski critique from Commentary magazine. An essay by Edward Sisson pinpoints the way in which the defenders of the Darwinian paradigm adopt a legalizing party-line mentality that preempts doubt. Frank Tipler reviews the way in which the peer review system freezes dissent, and constitutes a form of de facto censorship. Whatever one's views on Intelligent Design these analyses are an alarming indication of the unique social conditioning factor that has beset the era of Big Science. Dembski's collection here is valuable but doesn't find too many dissenters beyond the range of the ID movement regulars. That's both alarming and sad, and a grim reminder of the totalizing ideology at work in the promotion of Darwin's theory.